In more than 40 episodes spanning 75 years, equity and bond fund investors have defied predictions that they would panic and spark crises. Yet banking regulators won’t let go of their “run” scenario. Why?

Time for French to take off Yellow Jackets, Macron suggests

President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday it is time for France to return to "sane reason" after months of protests by the anti-government Yellow Jackets movement.

In the latest in the series of "great debates" that Macron has held with communities around the country in response to the protests, the president seized on a question about tourism to say that violent demonstrations were not good for France's image abroad.

Although he did not mention the Yellow Jackets by name, Macron said: "We can no longer hear [people say] 'I think it's innocent and wonderful to participate in protests that produce [violence]' ... It's time to get back to sane reason."

Macron made his remarks in a meeting with mayors from the rural Indre region of central France, after a poll showed that — for the first time — more than half of France's population want the Yellow Jackets protests to end.

Macron had previously refrained from calling so clearly for an end to the protests, now in their fourth month, even during the height of the December holiday season, when polls showed they enjoyed broad support.

The president has also been bolstered by a drop in unemployment and a bump in his approval rating. On Thursday, the national statistics institute INSEE announced the jobless rate had dropped to 8.8 percent — its lowest level in a decade. Earlier this week, a poll found positive views of both Macron and Prime Minister Edouard Philippe had increased by 6 percentage points within a month. However, the president's rating is still low, at 36 percent.

Thursday's televised debate with the mayors was mostly courteous and centred around the dearth of doctors and public services in rural communities. However, there was one testy exchange between Macron and a Socialist mayor, who accused the president and his government of "stigmatizing mayors for 18 months." Macron shot back: "I never said there are too many mayors, or that they are incompetent or clientelist."

The text of a speech Macron gave to mayors in May 2018 shows that he said "I won't be the loincloth of ... some elected officials when they are engaged in bad policies or clientelism or communitarianism."

Thursday's debate, the seventh of its kind, was more intimate than previous ones. It was held in a small room with only around 30 mayors instead of the hundreds packed into gymnasiums in prior weeks.

An official in Macron's entourage said his team has been "keen to diversify the formats as much as possible in order to include as wide a cross-section of the population as possible and allow the president to gather the maximum amount of feedback."

After an initial high level of interest, TV ratings for the debates have steadily declined. Le Parisien reported last week that 1.2 million viewers watched the first one in January while only 410,000 watched the fourth. In a further sign of waning interest, one of the country's three main news channels, LCI, didn't carry Thursday's debate live.